Baghdadis converged on the Palestine Hotel, where US officers and media are housed, after foreign radio stations broadcast a call for qualified people to come forward.

By Saturday night, a police cruiser carrying three civilian officers was patrolling the streets again for the first time since the regime's collapse to cheers Wednesday, which gave way to city-wide rampages by sometimes armed bands.

Captain Mohammed Abdul Karim al-Asaidi said he was fufilling his duty to Baghdad's safety.

"It was time to get back to work," he told AFP. "We're working for the people, not for a government."

The public mood has been precarious since Baghdad fell with only a whimper of resistance, as fear and anger at US troops met the breakdown in security.

Merchant Hassan Farhid summed up sentiments in Baghdad: "If the Americans don't do anything, we will turn against them."

Iraqi police officers, out in force in the capital until Baghdad fell, vanished with the appearance of the US troops, and nearly all the city's police stations have been ransacked.

In a further sign of the fragility of the peace, a fierce firefight broke out Saturday afternoon near the Palestine hotel.

Marines stationed near the hotel exchanged machinegun fire with Iraqi fighters for around 10 minutes, taking cover behind their armored vehicles as cameramen and photographers rushed to film the firefight.

Other Iraqis had converged on the hotel earlier asking to use journalists' satellite phones to call relatives abroad after the collapse of communications facilities.

Telephone exchanges were among the targets of US-British warplanes and missiles which began blasting away at the infrastructure on March 20.

US forces, however, managed to secure the city's main water supply station, which had been threatened by looters, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said in Geneva.

The spokeswoman, Antonella Notari, also said the capital's Medical City hospital complex was partly under the control of US forces.

"These are very concrete, very useful measures, but the entire infrastructure serving the civilian population also has to be secured," she told AFP.

Public services, in particular water and electricity, have been out for many days.

Meanwhile Iraqi Muslims came to the aid of Baghdad's tiny Jewish community, chasing out looters trying to sack its cultural center in the capital's old town.

Shops remained shut in downtown Baghdad, notably on normally bustling Saadun Avenue. The price of gasoline shot from five cents to one US dollar a liter before gas stations also stopped serving motorists.

Some pharmacies were open on Rashid Street, but most premises kept their shutters down. Armed shopowners stood guard outside.

"It's as if we were in a big ship in stormy seas. We'll be sinking soon," said shopowner Salah Jamir.

The United States is to send nearly 1,200 police consultants, advisors and judicial experts to Iraq in the coming weeks to help establish security in the aftermath of the war, the State Department said Friday.

For the moment, US troops are stationed in key buildings but there are very few of them on the streets of the capital.

Marine Colonel Peter Zarcone, tasked with maintaining civil order, told the BBC late Friday: "We are trying to get the Baghdad police to come back to work and do their jobs.

"We've been trying to contact police officials. We've put out word over the airwaves to come and see us. We've talked to approximately three individuals today," added Zarcone, who was speaking from Baghdad.

Meanwhile, new finds by US troops offered bizarre and chilling glimpses into the regime under President Saddam Hussein.

Soldiers found a large cache of thousands of light arms in a central Baghdad residence, including gold-plated rifles inscribed as gifts from Saddam.

"It is definitely a major discovery," said a US officer, who asked not to be identified, in the posh Al-Harithiya neighborhood.

US forces have also opened up to journalists a feared Baghdad prison and torture chamber that served as a small component in a massive complex that once housed the Iraqi secret police.

It was described by US military authorities as command and control for the entire country under the formal title of Department for General Security.

"It was home to the secret police and Iraqi military intelligence and every time an Iraqi comes within distance they feel sick," said Adba Alz of the Free Iraqi Forces, grouping fighters from a US-backed Iraqi opposition group.

SPACE.WIRE